Pleasant Ridge filmmaker gets $50K of MAD money

Filmmaker Alan Bernstein of Pleasant Ridge is preserving the story behind MAD magazine with a documentary. He is raised more than $56,600 in less than a month to finish the project through Kickstarter.

PLEASANT RIDGE — The last month has been a mad MAD world for filmmaker Alan Bernstein but all the work and worry paid off when he raised more than $50,000 to complete a documentary about the magazine molding and rotting young minds for 60 years.

A $10,000 pledge to the Kickstarter campaign on Tuesday morning put the 43-year-old director and co-producer Doug Gilford of Portland, Ore., at $42,000. The effort to finish “When We Went MAD” picked up steam after that.

“ From 9a.m. to midnight we received the remaining $8,000 we needed,” Bernstein said. “It was amazing to see the new contributions streaming in one after the other. I can only guess, but I think it was a case of people seeing how close we were after the large contribution.” At the same time, a few celebrities, including Judd Apatow, Adam West and Neil Gaiman, started to respond to Twitter posts.

“Our tweets were pleading for them to tell their followers to check us out,” Bernstein said, adding newspaper articles and blog mentions added to the momentum.

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“It all came together at the same time and broke open. I wouldn’t say viral, but perhaps sniffle,” he said.

Contributions surpassed $56,600 28 days into the 30-day campaign.

Kickstarter is a crowd-funding platform that allows inventors, artists, business owners and just about anyone to pitch plans and dreams to an online audience for donations. The backers get incentives based on their pledge amounts. If the goal is reached, everyone pays up and waits for their rewards. If the goal falls short, no one pays and get rewards.

The two $10,000 donors to the MAD campaign will be listed in the credits as executive producers and get autographed swag like a poster designed by MAD artist Tom Richmond and much more. Most of the 500-plus donors -- about 300 -- gave $25 for a download of the completed movie.

Now what?

“We start planning for the rest of the project,” Bernstein said, listing things to do, such as contacting more MAD contributors to set up interviews, transcribing old interviews, writing,and convincing well-known entertainers and politicians influenced by MAD to pay tribute to the magazine.

“I can’t imagine a MAD documentary without interviews from such comedians and entertainers as Howard Stern, John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Matt Groening, and Dick Cheney,” he said.

The Kickstarter pledges will pay for a film crew to rent equipment and travel for interviews as well as post-production costs for what Bernstein expects to be a Ken Burns-like documentary.

For now, Bernstein is tired and planning a simple celebration: going to his daughter’s kindergarten dance.